Thursday, July 14, 2005

Profiling in the War on Terror

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the Al Arabiya television station, wrote:

“It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.”

We should pay attention to these words if we want to win a war against terrorists. In addition, we must face the following facts:

First, we are in a war;

Second, our enemy in this war has already infiltrated our country and, indeed, all western democracies; and

Third, this enemy cannot be appeased;

Early in any engagement in a traditional war, a military tries to debilitate its enemy's systems of protection and weapons. In the war on terror, our enemy uses privacy laws and the deceipt of being your neighbor as his shield. And, he is using common western technology for his weapon (jet planes and cars) or his battleground (trains, subways, and buses). We must remove his shield and his ability to use that technology for harm. Given the facts listed above, that means we must PROFILE.

We can no longer use real or imaginary transgressions of the police against certain races as a blanket excuse not to profile Muslims in this country. Political correctness and the ACLU be damned; this is a war. To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson: "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."

Maybe we should start by placing eavesdropping devices in every mosque known to have belligerents in the congregation. And, how is it possible, after 9/11, that airport attendants rifle through the underwear of seventy-year old caucasian grandmothers and ten-year old caucasian Little Leaguers at least as often as guys with names like Abdel Rahman al-Rashed? As someone who is very close to me who has blond hair and blue eyes once said:

"If all terrorists had blond hair and blue eyes, I'd accept that I'd have to get to the airport a little earlier to catch my flight"

Innocent Muslims in the west need to have thicker skin and accept this environment. They also need to raise their voices and arms against this scourge.